Chapter 4, Part 21 Everything seems so familiar as I step out of the plane that takes me from Bangkok to Yangon. The clean and airy modern airport terminal looks just how I remember it, and the squiggly Burmese script is as mysterious as it […]
All posts tagged: the Spice Odyssey
Mandalay and the Last Burmese Kingdom
Chapter 4, Part 20 Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is a land that gave birth to great kings who ruled some of the mightiest empires in the history of Southeast Asia. Anawrahta established the first Burmese empire in the 11th century, a regional power that […]
Nyaung Shwe: A Town on the Edge
Chapter 4, Part 19 On a clear Monday morning in the town of Nyaung Shwe in Central Myanmar, James and I walked to the north along a country road with Tharzi Pond to its right and paddy fields to the left. Just out of town, […]
Penang and the Chinese Diaspora in Southeast Asia
Chapter 4, Part 18 At the height of the spice trade in the Orient, the Europeans had their eyes fixated on strategic islands along the trade routes, which they eventually colonized. From British Hong Kong and Portuguese Macau at the Pearl River Delta, to Singapore […]
George Town’s Light and Shadow
Chapter 4, Part 17 The 19th century in South Asia. It was a period of time in history when the British consolidated their colonial possessions in the Indian subcontinent. What started out as mere trade missions in the early 17th century, became a vast colonial […]
Thanjavur and the Doctrine of Lapse
Chapter 4, Part 16 Once South and Southeast Asia were lands where Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms and empires, and later Islamic sultanates, conquered one another not only to exert their dominance, but also to control the lucrative spice trade in the region. Then the Europeans […]
Pondicherry: Vestiges of French India
Chapter 4, Part 15 In 2006 I was in my second year learning French, and like many others who learned the language, I became a Francophile. I spent a considerable amount of time turning the pages of various French magazines and tuning into TV5Monde whenever possible, […]
Chennai: An Enduring Charm
Chapter 4, Part 14 A string of light emerged on the horizon – scattered yellow speckles suggestive of an incoherent network of offices, houses, temples and roads – forming a boundary against the darkness beyond. The plane made a turn, and more were presented to […]
Medan: From Deli to Tjong A Fie
Chapter 4, Part 13 In politics there are no permanent friends or enemies, only interests. This has been repeatedly proven in the history of relations among nations where two unlikely partners often formed alliances to defeat their common rival. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) […]
Galle Fort: Battleground of the Europeans
Chapter 4, Part 12 For thousands of years the island of Sri Lanka – known to the ancient Greeks as Taprobana, to the Persians and Arabs as Sarandib, to the Portuguese as Ceilão, to the British as Ceylon, and mentioned in the Hindu epics of […]
Madu Ganga: Following the Cinnamon Scent
Chapter 4, Part 11 Last year, James and I explored six countries in Southeast and South Asia for six months to retrace parts of the spice route which had connected nations across both regions as well as attracted merchants from Europe to get their share […]
The Faces of Banda
Chapter 4, Part 10 Blessed with fertile soils and pristine waters, which at one point in history turned out to be a curse, the Banda Islands today is a place where avid divers go for its world-class reefs (the islands lie at the heart of […]
What an Amazing World! 